Two public education institutions in Sydneys west the University of Western Sydneys (UWS) Blacktown campus and Macquarie Boys High in Parramatta are set for the chopping block. The UWS board of trustees is trying to close the Nirimba campus at Blacktown in 2009. Additionally, on August 23, NSW education minister John Della Bosca announced the state Labor governments intention to close Macquarie Boys Technology High School in Parramatta by 2009.
Rachel Evans
On September 26, angry workers picketed the Seven Hills offices of national trucking company McArthur Express, which has collapsed owing 700 workers across Australia an estimated $2.5 million in pay and entitlements.
On September 10, almost all Esselte workers who had struck against an attempt to impose Australian Workplace Agreements (AWAs individual contracts) went back to work with a union collective agreement. However, David Rojas, the sites union delegate, has been sacked and barred from the workplace.
On August 30, western Sydney charged US President George Bush with war crimes committed during the immoral and illegal occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq. Bush was also charged with the crimes of assault on the environment, crimes against civil liberties and against workers. A People’s Tribunal was held at the Parramatta Town Hall, and prosecuting witnesses included former Guantanamo Bay detainee Mamdouh Habib, Dennis Doherty (from the Anti-Bases Coalition and the Communist Party of Australia), Kamala Emanuel (environment spokesperson for the Socialist Alliance) and Ninos Tooma (Iraqi activist).
On August 15 at 9.30pm, Wang, a Chinese man in the maximum security building at the Villawood immigration detention centre, climbed onto the roof and threatened to kill himself. Wang, normally a happy man in a terrible environment, was driven to take this action after the immigration department refused to let him visit his wife in hospital where she had gone after an accident.
As striking workers at office supplies manufacturers Esselte Australia in Minto entered their seventh week of resilient action against forced Australian Workplace Agreements (AWAs), their boss was getting more desperate.
Fifteen of the 20 workers at the Esselte site in Minto, in Sydneys south-west, have been on strike for four weeks. The stationary company has been trying to force its employees onto Australian Workplace Agreements (AWAs individual contracts) for two years.
Ali Humayun, the queer Pakistani locked up in Villawood Immigration Detention Centre, is suing VIDC management and the federal government for negligence of care.
World Refugee Day was marked with a loud protest by the Sudanese community and friends on June 20 in Hyde Park, to call for urgent action over the crisis in Darfur that has left more than 400,000 people dead. Eighty people participated in the rally organised by the Darfur Action Network (DAN) and Caritas International including leaders of the Sudanese community in Melbourne.
On May 23, Sydneys Refugee Action Coalition (RAC) issued a call for support for a Chinese asylum seeker at Villawood detention centre who has been on hunger strike for 57 days. There are reports that the man was transferred to hospital from Villawoods medical centre on May 22.
Two Chinese detainees have been on hunger strike in the Villawood detention centre for more than 40 days. During that time, an asylum seeker in Stage One has stabbed himself. His condition is deteriorating.
Ali Humanyun, a Pakistani queer refugee seeking asylum in Australia, has been incarcerated inside the Villawood detention centre for two years and four months. He was refused a Protection (Class XA) Visa in May 2006 and rejected by the Refugee Review Tribunal (RRT) in October. Humanyun was not granted legal aid for a Federal Magistrates Court appearance, and so the RRT’s decision was upheld on February 19.
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